Matthew Hinton / The Times-PicayuneMayor Mitch Landrieu, pictured Tuesday.Mayor Mitch Landrieu announced Wednesday he is asking U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to send federal resources to help reform the New Orleans Police Department.

Landrieu, standing beside more than a dozen community leaders, said at a news conference that he wants the Justice Department to come in and do an assessment of the NOPD and the criminal justice system.

Landrieu said he anticipates that the federal assessment would eventually result in a consent decree, a move that could mean federal oversight for the troubled department.

"It is clear that nothing short of a complete transformation is necessary and essential to ensure safety for the citizens of New Orleans," Landrieu wrote in his

The Justice Department has eight open civil rights investigations into the conduct of New Orlean police officers, many of them focusing on their actions in the days after Hurricane Katrina. Landrieu's move, however, has no bearing on those criminal investigations.

The Department of Justice released a statement this afternoon regarding Landrieu's request.

"We will consider these requests to determine what action, if any, is appropriate," said DOJ spokesman Alejandro Miyar.

The U.S. Department of Justice's special litigation section attacks police corruption from an institutional perspective, requiring an agency's leaders to change how the department operates.

The section is under the umbrella of the Justice Department's civil rights division, which also handles criminal prosecutions of alleged illegal activity by police officers.

Under the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act, the Justice Department was given the power to sue departments where it alleges a "pattern or practice" of civil rights violations by officers.

During the Clinton administration, the department sued a handful of agencies, establishing consent decrees that mandated specific changes in use-of-force policies, the creation of systems to weed out bad officers, officer training and citizen complaint procedures.

The department also established similar memorandums of agreements with some police forces, as well as issuing less serious "investigative finding letters."

Under the Bush administration, the use of consent decrees dramatically declined. Officials in President Obama's Justice Department have vowed to reimplement many of the practices used in the Clinton years.

On Tuesday, a community coalition wrote to the Justice Department asking it to intervene more aggressively in NOPD.

Already, Justice officials have said NOPD is under more federal scrutiny than any police department in America.